Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,089,920 discloses and claims a novel tape drive assembly that uses DAT (Digital Audio Tape) format cassettes and a high density DAT drive assembly, in which a plurality of cassettes are stored in a cassette tray located in a magazine holding area below the drive assembly, and a transport mechanism loads and unloads a selected cassette between the tray and the tape drive. In the known drive assembly, a front bezel is provided with two openings an upper door through which single cassettes may be individually loaded and unloaded into the tape drive, and a lower door through which an ordered sequence of cassettes stored in a cassette tray may be loaded and unloaded into the magazine holding area below the tape drive.
Commonly assigned copending application Ser. No. 07/953,639, filed Sep. 29, 1992 (Bjordahl) describes and claims an improved front panel for a magazine-loading DAT drive assembly having access doors which are normally positively biased to a closed position, but are inwardly deflected to a loading position as the cassette or magazine is being manually inserted into the drive assembly behind the panel and which are outwardly deflected to an unloading position as the cassette or magazine is being ejected from the drive assembly to a position from which they may be manually removed.
The access doors of the prior art loading mechanisms are subject to jamming and possible injury to an operator if opened inwardly during certain critical portions of the unloading cycle. Accordingly, it is conventional to provide a door operating and/or latching mechanism to ensure that the door is maintained in a jam-free position during the unloading cycle. However, the known latching mechanisms are not adapted for use with a bidirectional swinging access door which needs to be free to swing outwardly once the loading mechanism advances from its operational position inside the drive to a loading/unloading position adjacent the swinging door, and which also needs to be free to swing inwardly to receive a new cassette or magazine once the loading mechanism has reached the loading/unloading position and as it returns back to its operational position.